Bill Nighy Had No Idea He Was Even In Pirates Of The Caribbean 5

The following story contains spoilers for the post-credits scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Whether or not we'll see another Piratesof the Caribbean movie is unclear. However, that didn't stop the most recent entry in the franchise from teasing a potential follow-up, even though the actor attached to that tease apparently had no idea. Not only was Bill Nighy not involved in the post-credits cameo of Davy Jones himself, he apparently wasn't even aware the moment had happened until just recently. When asked about the moment in an interview, Nighy said...

I didn't know anything about it until about a week ago. The cab driver said, 'Are you doing the next one?' I said, 'No. I didn't know there was a next one.' He said, 'Well, you were in the last one'. I said, 'No I wasn't. He said, 'Yes, you were'. So that's all I know. You probably know more than I do.

We didn't really expect that Disney brought Bill Nighy in to film the cameo scene. If the movie had, you almost certainly would have seen the actor's face, and you never do. Still, it's pretty funny that not only did nobody at Disney tell him it was happening, apparently, three months after the movie came out, nobody else had either. Does nobody talk to the actor about movies?

If you haven't seen Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and yet spoiler warnings hold no power over you, then we'll get you caught up. At the end of the latest Pirates movie, the curse that kept Orlando Bloom's Will Turner attached to the Flying Dutchman was broken and he was able to return home to his wife and son. The post credits scene shows Will and Elizabeth Turner asleep in bed together as the audience hears footsteps approaching their room. We see a pair of boots enter the room and walk up to the bed. An arm is raised as if it's going to strike at the bed, only the arm is actually a claw, one belonging to Davy Jones, Bill Nighy's character in two previous Pirates movies. Will wakes up to find nothing there, implying that perhaps what we'd just seen was a dream, before the camera pans down to the floor to show a small pool of water and some ocean detritus.

It turns out, according to Bill Nighy's comments to Empire, that he apparently hadn't even gotten around to seeing the movie yet, so it took a random comment from a cab driver to inform him that his character did appear in the new film. For what it's worth, Nighy says he'd "be there like a shot" if he was asked to return for another Pirates movie, so if anybody actually had a plot in mind that justified that scene, there may actually be a chance that it could happen.

While Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales produced a somewhat anemic $171 million box office domestically, as compared to its $230 million budget, it put up huge international numbers, reaching almost $800 million around the world. The franchise certainly still has enough audience interest to justify a sequel, and now it seems to have a bad guy lined up if Disney wants him. One assumes Disney will actually call him and tell him this time if the studio decides to bring back Davy Jones.